Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development has a very useful resource 'Ipads in Special Education'. This is a comprehensive document listing hundreds of educational apps by category as well as providing information on the accessibility funtions of the iPad. (Prices of the Apps are not included)

Apple has a Special Education section in the iTunes App store listing a range of Apps with their prices.Visit Apples webpage explaining the accessibility features of the iPad for:

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

If you are planning on buying multiple iPads for your school you need to do a bit of planning around the management, administration and pedagogical integration of the iPad in your classroom. There are also important issues around licencing of apps. The following articles provide some background information and practical strategies for schools:

Australian Macworld discusses the main issues for schools in iPad goes to School...... For starters, how does a school deal with the issue of students putting apps onto iPads? If the iPad is a shared resource, then having students install or remove apps can be a significant problem. Apple’s iOS deployment tools (developer.apple.com/library/ios) can help with locking down elements of the operating system and making it easy to push new apps onto devices using your wireless network.

Application licensing is also a concern. When an app is bought through the App Store it’s only licensed for one user. That means that the practice of setting up one reference iPad, backing it up and then restoring that installation onto multiple iPads will result in breaching the software licensing conditions. Apple is addressing this with a volume licensing program in the United States. There’s no word on when that will be coming to Australia, however.

Where students are allocated an iPad for their own use, life gets a little easier. iOS apps can be added to the school booklist and students can be given iTunes Store vouchers in order to buy apps themselves and set the device up to suit themselves. .......... Read more.

Ringwood Secondary College in Victoria is implementing a 1-1 iPad rollout to its Year 7 students. They have developed an implementation document "Yr 7 iPad info 2011" around setting up accounts and installation of apps. Each student is provided with an iTunes card to the value of $50 as part of their iPad package , to allow an individual student account to be created and apps downloaded. This will all be done at school to ensure students have installed the correct apps.

This article provides some really good points about planning for both infrastructure needs and the educational applications of the iPad. It discusses device management and content management and some thoughts around pedagogy. (This article also mentions the volume licensing program which as yet is only available in the USA)